Sanja Modric, political analyst for Novi List daily, appeared on N1 on Thursday and commented on the developing e-mail affair involving leaked correspondence of former Economy Minister Martina Dalic and consultants who drafted the controversial Lex Agrokor bill.

The new e-mails published on Thursday show that Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic had met three times with members of the mailing group.

“We knew that, even before the latest e-mails were published, anyone who uses logic already thought that the Prime Minister had known about this. It was his Deputy Prime Ministern (Martina Dalic), Agrokor was the top issue this government had to deal with, he had to know. Now we have it in writing that he was involved. His position now is not good, because he is perceived as tainted (by this), even among voters who don’t vote for the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), among people who think he is a decent man, not corrupt, who would not allow things that went on earlier to keep going on.”

Ilko Cimic, the Index.hr journalist who broke the story on e-mails, said earlier this week that he expected resignations from the entire government to follow.

“No, the government certainly will not resign. If something else happens, something we are not aware of right now, than that’s a possibility, but in this situation I can’t see the government resigning. HDZ’s position isn’t that good. They could have called an early election before this, but now the situation is very much inconvenient for them. Their coalition partners, who have been put together haphazardly, are sticking to this government like leeches. I’m not surprised by the actions of any of them, I’m only suprised by ethnic minority MPs who are really exhibiting strange behaviour in this situation.”

How would you explain the position ethnic minority MPs took?

“We could peel the onion here and speculate why minorities are behaving this way (supporting PM Plenkovic). It is possible that they fear – with such a horribly ineffective opposition – that if Plenkovic fell in these circumstances, that HDZ would be taken over by its most extreme far-right faction. Perhaps that is what they fear, and that might be the reason why they choose to protect Plenkovic so explicitly in this situation.”

Follow N1 via mobile apps for Android | iPhone/iPad | Windows| and social media on Twitter | Facebook.